
1 



IBetngjiud Pottu^ 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Chap. &i>r 'Copyright No.,. 
ShelldSsa 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






"LIFE" SERIES. 

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his 

glowing hands ; 
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden 

sands. 

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the 

chords with might; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in 

music out of sight. 



"LIFE" SERIES. 
<«- 

Lowell Times.— The books are very beautiful, and 
excellently adapted for simple gifts. Their value, 
however, is in their contents: self-development, 
helpfulness, unselfishness, great-hearted manliness. 

The House Beautiful, By William C. Gannett. 

As Natural as Life, By Charles G. Ames. 

In Love with Love, By James H. West. 

A Child of Nature, By Marion D. Shutter. 

Power and Use, By John W. Chadwick. 

Being and Doing, By Various Authors. 

Farther On, By Various Authors. 

Love Does It All, By Ida Lemon Hildyard. 

Baltimore American. — There is a strengthening, 
tranquil, uplifting power in these little books that 
makes one cherish for them, when they have been 
enjoyed and laid aside, the warm, grateful senti- 
ment with which we treasure dear friends. 

Cloth, beveled, neatly stamped, each 50 cents. 

Special white and gold edition, full gilt edges, in box, 

each ft cents. 

Descriptive circular on application. 

<*- 

*#* For sale by booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on 
receipt of price, by 

JAMES H. WEST, Publisher, Boston, Mass. 



BEING AND DOING. 



To Be ! to Do ! To have the zeal to climb 
O'er all the shocks of Fate to zones sublime ! 
To know that Time's successes, — praise and blame, — 
Are transient fires however tierce they flame ; 
That soon and late are equal, — death and birth, — 
And love's sweet dominance alone of worth; 
That toil and struggle and pain's agony- 
Are nothing if the inner eye but see ! 
To realize, though cumbered in earth's ooze, 
That there are heights with ever vaster views 
To which the soul is hasting, freed from strife ! — 
This is the spirit's pole-star — this is life. 



Being and Doing 



FIVE LIFE -STUDIES 



William C. Gannett, Arthur M. Tschudy, 

Paul R. Frothingham, Samuel M. Crothers, 

James M. Leighton. 







OSTON 



James H. West, Publisher 
174 High Stbeet 



FGEIVED 



**f!l 



* 



Copyright, 1897, 
By JAMES H. WEST. 



cO 



Three camels, o'er the desert sands, 
Bore travelers from distant lands. 
When far domes gleamed through hazy air, 
One said, — It is a time for prayer. 

Alighting, in his camel's shade 
Each bowed him to the earth and prayed. 
And each one named his soul's desire 
To him who gave men hearts of fire. 

The first one prayed, — My purpose bless, 
Give this world's honor its success. 
Prolong my days. As I grow old 
Increase my lands, my friends, my gold. 

The second said, — Forgive my sin, 
That I thy heaven at last may win. 
O'er life's last wreck my soul would rise, 
To walk with thee in Paradise. 

The last one prayed, — O Heart above ! 
Whose ways are hid, but hid in love, 
Give me through labor, rue and strife, 
To enter deeper into life. 

— Bwight M. Hodge. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Culture without College 9 

By William C. Gannett. 

Accepting Oubselves 35 

By Authur M. TSCHUDY. 

Beauty of Character 61 

By Paul R. Fjrothingham. 

MAKING THE BEST OF It 83 

By Samuel M. Crothees. 

Winter Fires 95 

By James M. Leighton. 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 



BY 

William C. Gannett. 



Very early, I perceived that the object of life is to 
grow. — Margaret Fuller, 

Progress, in the sense of acquisition, is something; 
but progress in the sense of being is a great deal more. 
To grow higher, deeper, wider, as the years go on; to 
conquer difficulties, and acquire more and more power; 
to feel all one's faculties unfolding, and truth descend- 
ing into the soul,— this makes life worth living. 

— James Freeman Clarke. 

I have a stake in every star, 

In every beam that fills the day; 
All hearts of men my coffers are, 

My ores arterial tides convey; 
The fields, the skies, the sweet replies 

Of thought to thought are my gold-dust: 
The oaks, the brooks, and speaking looks 

Of lover's faith and friendship's trust. 

"All mine is thine," the sky-soul saith: 
" The wealth I am, must thou become; 
Kicher and richer, breath by breath, 
Immortal gain, immortal room ! " 
And since all his mine also is, 

Life's gift outruns my fancies far, 
And drowns the dream in larger stream, 
As morning drinks the morning star. 

— David A. Wasson. 
(8) 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

One boy and one girl can go to Harvard 
College or Wellesley, to Ann Arbor or 
Cornell, while a thousand boys and girls can- 
not go : let not the thousand think that culture 
without college is impossible for them. It is 
well to always remember this ; and well, in con- 
nection, to say over to ourselves now and then 
certain homely old truths about education which 
we are apt to forget; old truths which those 
who go to school, and those who are through 
school, and those who hardly ever have had a 
chance for school, all equally need to bear in 
mind; homely truths which the schoolmasters 
and the school books comparatively little em- 
phasize, yet which are more important than 
anything which they do emphasize ; truths 
about the fundamental education, that which 
underlies all other education, and which all 



10 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

the rest is for, and which goes on independently 
of time and place, equally in school and out 
of it, equally in term-time and in vacation, 
equally in youth and in age. But this is the 
word to keep to the front: One girl and one 
boy can go to Harvard or Wellesley, while a 
thousand cannot: let not the thousand think 
that culture without college is impossible for 
them. 

Of the thousand, however, many may hurry 
to say, that they do not care for " culture," 
anyway. Yet " culture " is but a sort of glory- 
word for " education." There is a flower hint 
in " culture " that suggests not only the process 
of growing and unfolding, but the beauty of 
the blossom and the service of the fruit at 
last. When men laugh at it, their very mis- 
spelling — "culchur" — shows that what they 
laugh at is not the real thing, but some dwarf 
or caricature that apes the real thing. No one 
who is wise laughs at true culture. Everyone 
who is wise wants it. Everybody who is wise 
tries for it. Culture is that which turns the 
little, sour, wild crab-apple of the roadside into 
the apple of the orchard. Culture is that 
which turns the clumsy apprentice into the 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 11 

workman who honors his calling and is honor 
to it. Culture is that which transforms the 
wilful child of five years into the earnest boy 
of ten, the self -controlling man of twenty, the 
helper of men at thirty, the loved of men at 
fifty. Culture is that which takes a mind in 
its crab-apple, 'prentice, uncontrolled stage, 
and trains it into a steady power to see, to 
grasp, to retain, to compare, to judge, and 
to find the law in the fact. Nobody really 
laughs at this. The laugh comes in when this 
large, inspiring word is used for a varnish of 
make-believe wisdom, or when it is dwarfed 
to mean a bookish education only, or — 
dwarf of a dwarf — a mere text-bookish educa- 
tion, such as the high school and college are 
sometimes thought to give, and sometimes do 
give. 

Yet if to-day they give no more than that 
it is the fault of the boy and girl rather than 
of the school. Our colleges and high schools 
have much yet to learn, but no one knows 
this so well as themselves. The educators 
were never so wise as now in suspecting their 
own methods, and never more in earnest to 
find out better ones. By all means go to 



12 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

college, if you can; or if, when young, you 
could not go, give your boys and girls the 
chance you missed. That is an uncolleged 
parent's glory, — to give his child the educa- 
tion that he himself missed. Go to college, 
especially if you have to pinch in order to go 
and get through; for that pinch on the money 
side is apt to halve the dangers and double 
the profits of college. Go all the more for that. 
Go, because the college is a greenhouse for 
the mind, where its faculties can be started 
and trained more quickly than outside. But, 
after all, the great crops on which the country 
feeds are not started, still less do they grow, 
in the greenhouses ; no more do the great 
faculties of mental and moral nature have 
vital need of college training. And, whether 
you go or not, keep two main facts in mind: 
this, first, that education chiefly depends on 
the boy, not on the place, even when the 
place is the best college in the land; and 
this, second, that in the boy or girl it depends 
more on the will power than the brain power. 
And what do these two facts hint but that 
culture can be won outside of a college by 
means which nearly all of us can master? 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 13 

So I repeat it again : while one boy and one 
girl can go to Harvard or Wellesley, and a 
thousand cannot, let not the thousand think 
that culture without college is impossible. 



(Etmcarum Ins mainlg in Efyctt Groups 

of i^aijtts. 

Rather let each one of the thousand think 
just the reverse, and think often, — culture 
without college is possible, and possible for 
me! Keep that motto bright on the mind's 
inner wall. It is possible, because the main 
of education lies in self-disciplines, — self- 
disciplines in certain habits that are the 
tap-roots of both mind and character. Parents, 
teachers, friends, employers, home, school, 
workshop, travel, never make one grow : they 
only offer ns materials for growth. "Each for 
himself'' is the inevitable law of the actual 
growing. Xo one can assimilate the materials 
and make mind from them except one's self, 
just as no one can digest another's dinner 
for him. Education is always at bottom a 
self-discipline ; and all of us, to speak exactly. 
are u self-made n or self-grown men. What 



14 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

is more, these tap-root habits lie at the bottom 
of everybody's culture, and are the same for 
all. College men and uncolleged need them 
alike. Rich men and poor men need them 
alike. Talent and genius need them as much 
as the ordinary mind. 

What are they, these tap-root habits ? They 
lie in three groups. First, and underlying all, 
those habits by which we adjust the powers 
within us to each other, — self-control and 
temperance, courage to bear, courage to dare, 
concentration, energy, perseverance. Do you 
call these mental, or do you call them moral, 
habits ? Practically, they are both. They 
make the tap-root of both mind and character. 
It is they that compact the man into a unit, 
into a "person." And without them high 
success in any life-path is impossible. One 
cannot go far in book-knowledge without them, 
cannot go far on in his trade without them, — 
of course, cannot rise far toward nobleness 
without them. Without them the average 
man dooms himself to remain all his life a 
half-failure. Without them talent is lop- 
sidedness and genius top-heaviness, — sources 
of downfall rather than of rise. But with 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 15 

theni, whether one be dull or talented, every 
year of life sees growth, advance, uprise. 

Next, another group, — those habits by which 
we adjust ourselves to other people, — habits 
of justice, of sympathy, of modesty, of courtesy, 
and of the public spirit which begins in self- 
forgetting for those we love and widens into 
self-forgetting for all whom we can help. 
And, besides these two, a third group, — those 
habits by which we adjust ourselves to our 
ideals, habits of loyalty to truth as truth, of 
delight in beauty as beauty, of reverence for 
goodness as goodness. In this last group we 
reach conscious religion. 

As we name these great names one by one, 
the feeling rises in us, — these surely are the 
main things in culture : to have these habits 
is to have vigorous mind, firm character, high 
tastes. Specialties of knowledge and of art 
are good, but these are worth more than any 
specialty the college can give. Think them 
over once again, these man and woman-making 
habits, — the power of self-control, the power 
to dare and to bear, the power to face obstacles, 
to stand firm and to push hard; the splendid 
power of centering one's whole mind in fixed 



16 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

acts of attention ; the power to side instinctively 
with right against the wrong, to side with the 
weak against the strong, to side with public 
against private ends; the power to love the 
perfect, and to obey with answering joy a call 
to come up higher. This, this is the real 
"culture." And he who strengthens these 
powers in himself is a well-educated man. 
Now all these noble powers can be attained 
without high school or college. Then culture 
without college is possible, and possible for me. 

Wqz Wqxzz t&mfrerg: (I) <&nz'% OTtorfe* 

Who are the teachers that teach these things 
to us, — us who cannot go to Harvard or 
Cornell ? The chief teachers, also, are three, — 
Work, Society, Books; and the greatest of the 
three is one's work. To our work we owe 
more education than to anything else in life, 
spite of the hard names we sometimes give 
it. Work makes mind ; work makes character. 
No work, no culture. It matters less than we 
are apt to think what the work is, so that it 
be hard enough to require will, attention and 
honor to do it. Of all the educating forces. 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 17 

a steady need to do something promptly, 
persistently, accurately, and as well as we can, 
stands paramount, because nothing else so 
vitalizes those primary roots of mind and 
character, — the habits that came first upon 
our list. " Every man's task is his life- 
preserver/' Emerson reminds us : he means our 
soul's life. The workless people are the 
worthless people, even to themselves. What 
wealth gives, or should give, is choice of work, 
never exemption from it. A man born rich is 
born into danger. He, as also the man quick 
to win riches, must make himself trustee for 
causes not his own, or else his riches become 
his doom. In our land, at least, a " gentleman," 
whatever else he is, must be a good workman ; 
that is, one who has something to do, who can 
do it well, and who always does it well. 
To-day the daughter, also, of wealth elects a 
task to save her soul's life. To be an 
" educated" woman, she has to have capacity 
to do well some good work or other, and to 
be a true woman, she has to stand for that 
capacity exercised, for good work well done. 

Well done; for, if our work is to teach us, 
it must be good work, — good as we can do. 



18 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

The culture in it is proportioned to the 
quality of it, — not the absolute quality, but 
the quality as proportioned to our power. 
And good work means, first or last, and 
often both first and last, hard work. The 
master-workmen in any trade or profession 
have always been hard workmen. The actor 
Kean was a master on the stage : it is said 
that he practised two days on a single line; 
but, when he spoke the five words, they 
melted the house to tears. Hard work did 
that. Euskin is a master in the art of 
making sentences. He tells us he has often 
spent several hours in perfecting a single 
period. Hard work, again. Edward Everett 
Hale is a master in the art of writing short 
stories. To write the well-known story, "In 
His Name," he took a journey in Europe, 
ransacked a Lyons bookshop for old pamphlets, 
studied the history of poisoning, shut himself 
up a week or two in a country house, and 
then, says he, "I was ready to go to work." 
George Eliot was a mistress in the art of 
writing a long story. She spent six weeks 
in Florence before beginning "Komola," in 
order to catch the trick of language among 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 19 

the common people of the city; and her 
husband said that, before writing " Daniel 
Deronda," she read a thousand books on Jewish 
history. Hard work, that ; and she was a 
genius, too ! Darwin was a master-workman 
in science. In his scrap of autobiography he 
explains the success of his book, " The Origin 
of Species," by two causes : (1) It was so 
slowly written. More than twenty years of 
collection and arrangement of facts preceded 
its publication, and that publication was his 
fifth rewriting. First came a short, condensed 
statement, then another, then a long, full 
statement, then an abstract from this, and at 
last, abstracted from this abstract, came the 
book. What patient labor ! Yet Darwin was 
a man before whose genius all the men of 
science in the world stand in reverence. And 
(2) for years it was his "golden rule," as he 
calls it, to note and study every fact that 
seemed opposed to his theory. The result of 
this rule was that his book, when it appeared, 
was a sifted argument presented at its strongest, 
anticipating most of the objections that were 
raised to it. Hard work, all this, as he himself 
knew well; for it was himself who said: 



20 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

"Whenever I have found out that I have 
blundered, and when I have been contempt- 
uously criticised, and even when I have been 
over-praised, it has been my greatest comfort 
to say to myself, ( I have worked as hard and 
as well as I could, and no man can do more 
than this.'" 

Such instances hint how master-workmen 
educate themselves by and in their work to 
be the masters. And if this be true in book- 
making, it is no less true of any humbler 
task. Have you read what Mrs. Garfield once 
wrote to her husband, the man who was to 
be President ? "I am glad to tell you that, 
out of all the toil and disappointments of the 
summer just ended, I have risen up to a 
victory. I read something like this the other 
day: ' There is no healthy thought without 
labor, and thought makes the labor happy/ 
Perhaps this is the way I have been able to 
climb up higher. It came to me one morning 
when I was making bread. I said to myself: 
'Here I am, compelled by an inevitable 
necessity to make our bread this summer. 
Why not consider it a pleasant occupation, 
and make it so by trying to see what perfect 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 21 

bread I can make ? ? It seemed like an inspira- 
tion, and the whole of life grew brighter. 
The very sunshine seemed flowing down 
through my spirit into the white loaves; and 
now I believe my table is furnished with 
better bread than ever before. And this 
truth, old as creation, seems just now to have 
become fully mine, — that I need not be the 
shirking slave of toil, but its regal master, 
making whatever I do yield its best fruits." 

It is a great comfort and inspiration amid 
long, hard tasks to remember all this, and to 
say to one's self: "Why, this is a going-to- 
college for me : and this particular task is the 
day's lesson. I am not a drudge, but a pupil : 
let me do this thing as well as I can, and 
there is education, ' culture/ in it for me." 
The sense of quantity that lies in the task 
may tire and age us, — it often does : the 
sense of high quality put into the task 
refreshes and makes us young. Many of us 
contrive to miss the joy by not doing the 
work well enough to secure it. 



22 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

(2) <Sorietg* 

The second teacher for those of us who 
cannot go to college is Society. And, as with 
the head teacher, Work, we scarcely realize 
how much we owe this tireless assistant, and 
how much more it can teach than it does, if 
we will let it. Probably no eye meets eye, 
no hand clasps hand, no two voices mingle in 
a minute's conversation without some actual 
interchange of influence, unconscious, if not 
conscious. Think, then, of the education 
always going on for good or for ill! A 
wilderness of varied character stretches around 
us in every social circle. The heroes and the 
villains of the novels walk our streets, and 
we ourselves' are the stuff that Shakspere's 
plays are made of. The carpenter and the 
carpentress, the grocer and the grocer's wife, 
the parson and the lawyer, and the broods of 
playing children, hold more texts than any 
text-book. These are the novels and plays 
and text-books alive: books are men and 
women potted and canned, as it were. If we 
can only read well these neighbors of ours, 
each, like a bit of Scripture, is " profitable 



CUIiTUBE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 23 

for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness''; and the best 
among them are ••inspired of God*' to reveal 
to us — what? Ourselves, our own unknown 

possibilities, the sleeping powers within us. — 
and to make us come up higher. " Our chief 
want in life. — is it not somebody who can 
make us do what we can? x \Ye are easily 
great with the loved and honored associate." 
As if unexplored wastes of human nature lay 
within us, waiting for some Livingston or 
Kane to come that way. The opening of 
Africa's heart dates from a Livingston's 
advent ; so a capacity in us may date from a 
definite meeting or conversation with some 
fellow-man. 

The more persons we really can "meet/ 3 
then, the better for us. With an individual 
as with a town or a nation, civilization is pro- 
portioned to inter-communication. How many 
do we touch ? How large is our social horizon ? 
••'Every man my schoolmaster n is a motto for 
wise men, and a motto that makes one a wise 
man. Of Daniel Webster it was said that he 
never met a stable-boy without extracting 
from him some bit of information that was 



24 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

worth remembering. If "here is a person 
with some message for me" be the feeling 
with which we are wont to meet strangers, 
the result in four years may be worth one 
year of a college, — so great is the daily income 
of such a man's mind as compared with that 
of one who instinctively shuts himself up to 
a stranger. 

Among men thus trained and enriched are 
those we put on the school committee, send 
to the legislature, elect to be Mayor and 
Governor and possibly President, — or make 
Overseer of the very college that, as boys, 
they longed, but could not afford, to go to. 
Possibly President : the sum of Lincoln's whole 
schooling was hardly one year, but Lincoln 
knew men. ,And three or four others of our 
Presidents were also log-cabin boys. And 
should we ask them about their schooling, 
these leaders might answer: "My schooling? 
I have had none to speak of. My schoolmasters 
have been the men and women I have met in 
parlors, in the church, in the caucus, in the 
shop, the counting-rooms, on 'change. One 
taught me manners : one taught me tact. She 
raised my standards of justice and truthfulness 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 25 

and honor: he widened my ideas of public 
spirit. This one showed me how to save time 
in my work, and that one how to spend my 
leisure to advantage ; and many a man and 
many a woman has served to warn me by 
making my mistakes for me. I have seldom 
long faced a neighbor without facing a teacher." 
He who can say such things was born for 
an education, and will get it, whether he go 
to a college or not. 

But to get it, this profit from persons, one 
must really meet them, — meet, and not merely 
encounter, — meet them, and not merely their 
outside. How is it these head-scholars, in 
the school without books, manage to extract so 
much from others ? Some by a gift of eyes 
to see to the inside of a neighbor. Others 
by a genius for geniality, — that is, letting 
others cordially into the inside of one's self. 
But as in work, so in society, few win a 
great success without conscious, deliberate aim. 
Genius helps greatly, but even for genius there 
is no royal road to an art, — and this is a 
fine art, to extract a good education out of 
society. It takes bravery, modesty, sympathy 
and high choices. Bravery to conquer shyness, 



26 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

if one has it. For some poor fellows it takes 
campaigns of suffering to conquer shyness. If 
we are shy, we had better launch ourselves 
into the party, though we drift to the wall 
forlorn; better send ourselves to the dancing- 
school, though we only dare to dance with the 
little girls; better join a conversation-club 
and talk, though we hear our heart thump 
when we try; better make ourselves tell the 
story at table, until we can tell it, and others 
can hear it, without a shudder. By and by we 
shall hug and bless ourselves for this bravery. 
But through it all keep the holy spirit of 
shyness - — modesty ; for modesty gives the 
passport to the doors of the better and best 
in society. The clean, kind heart is needed, 
too; for this admits one past the mere doors, 
and past the reception-rooms of courtesy, to 
the inner living-rooms of mind and heart. 
And still the high choice is needed which 
habitually seeks and companions the best side 
of a man, and which instinctively tries to 
make friends among those brighter and nobler 
than one's self. Four things, — it takes them 
all; bravery, modesty, sympathy, and high 
choices in comradeship. Have these, and you 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 27 

will have the fine art of making neighbors, 
and of making your way quickly to the best 
in a neighbor. And men and women in loving 
faculties of approval will confer on you an 
invisible degree, "Master of Hearts/' — as 
honorable as any the colleges give. 

(3) Banks. 

And now a word about the third teacher 
who waits to teach us boys and girls and 
men and women who cannot go to college. 
His name is Books. He is the same great 
teacher that they have in colleges ; but in 
this day he goes about the country, teaching 
everybody. He goes to the big city and every 
alley in it, teaching. He goes to the little 
village and every cottage in it, teaching. He 
will teach just what one wishes to hear, — all 
manner of trash, all manner of vileness, if one 
wants that. He does teach a vast deal of 
mental dissipation, and leads many minds into 
very bad company. On the other hand, there 
is no end to the good things he will teach, if 
one wants them. He will teach us history. 
He will teach us science. He will teach us 



28 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

the love of noble literature. He will teach 
us how to think well, how to talk well, how 
to write well. And he will stand to us in 
place of good society, if we cannot otherwise 
command it; for in books we can visit in 
impersonal fashion the best of the race. He 
will almost bring the college to us who cannot 
go to it, if we are willing to study under 
him patiently and steadily and with high aims. 
But once more, it takes the patience, the 
steadiness, the high choices, and the hard work, 
or else he can do little for us. The young 
man ready to pay that price for his help will 
make for himself three Golden Rules : — 

I will be a reader; 

I will read best books; 

I will read best books in the best way. 

"I will be a reader": that means, no day 
shall make me so tired that I will not find 
an hour,— if not an hour, a half -hour; if not 
a half, then a quarter; if not a quarter, then 
five minutes — in which I will read something. 
With many of us the odd minutes of ten 
years are enough to make the difference 
between an educated and an uneducated man. 
The odd minutes of one winter or summer can 
make the difference between two good solid 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 29 

books taken into us and none at all taken in. 
The odd minutes of to-morrow can make the 
difference between a rich day and a poor day 
for our minds. The men on exchange grow 
rich on "margins": it is margins of time well 
used that give us mental riches. How many 
opulent minds have taught that secret ! There 
were Franklin, Theodore Parker, Lincoln,— all 
of them poor boys with horny hands and 
candlelight, no more ; there were Faraday, 
Chambers, Stephenson. Many and many a 
boy starting with good eyes, a fair mind, a 
strong will, and his odd minutes, has become 
an intellectual capitalist. Many a boy, — and 
how about girls ? Let me quote from Far 
and Near, a j ournal for working-girls : — 

"A young mother said: 'I haven't read a 
book in three months. I can't with the 
children.' But her neighbor across the way, 
with one more child, had read many volumes 
in that time by always keeping a book in her 
work-basket, ready to catch up at odd minutes. 
She seasoned her darning and mending with 
literature. Lucy Larcom, when a mill-girl in 
Lowell, carried a book in the big pocket of 
her apron, and records specially the fact that 
she read Wordsworth's poems and many of 



30 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

Shakspere's plays in spare minutes amid the 
clatter of spindles. Another lady told the 
writer that she read Carlyle's i French Revolu- 
tion' and Taine's ( English Literature/ while 
waiting for her husband to come to dinner. 
She was her own housemaid, and kept the 
books close at hand in the dining-room." 

But, of course, if I am to reach culture, 
the books that I read must be "best books" — 
not bad, not even pretty good, but the best 
my mind is able to absorb. That is our 
second Golden Rule. In this happy day of 
cheap literature beware of the literature of 
cheap quality. Each age begets out of its 
very civilization its own new temptation, some 
new form of dissipation. The saloon at the 
corner is only about two hundred years old. 
The newspaper on the table in every home is 
hardly fifty years old; but the " newspaper 
habit " has already become a direful dissipation 
for many of us, — partly because the papers 
are so good. We could not live without them ; 
but their toothsome scrappiness, taken as 
mental " square meals," bewilders attention, 
shallows the judgment, fritters the memory, 
steals the growing-time. It is the " newspaper 
habit" that does the harm. Too much news- 



CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 31 

paper will spoil one for magazines. Too much 
magazine will spoil one for a solid book. Our 
margins are small. How shall we use them? 
It is easy to use them all up, and have 
nothing to show. Look out the words " Index 
Expurgatorius " in the cyclopaedia to see what 
they mean, and then make a private Index 
Expurgatorius, on which a great many innocent 
books as well as all bad books shall be 
registered, — innocent books which are not 
innocent for you and for me, because our 
time-margins are small. If I am a boy, 
the question on which my education is apt 
to turn is this : Shall the newspaper be 
the staple of my reading ? If I am a girl, 
the turning-question is : Shall love-stories be 
the staple of my reading ? Am I a grown 
man or woman, the turning, or perhaps the 
turned, question is, What sort of books lie 
waiting on my table for the leisure hour at 
night, and what do I read on Sunday 
afternoons ? In our public libraries seventy 
to eighty-five per cent, of the books taken 
out are classed as "juveniles and fictions." If 
my library book is often in that seventy per 
cent., one thing is sure, — I am no candidate 
for " culture," Whereas the habit of absorbing 



32 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 

three or four "real" books each year, and 
year by year, goes far in ten years toward 
making the gentleman, making the lady. 

Of absorbing them, I say; for "I will read 
best books in the best ivay." This, our last 
rule, can be put in one word, — read and 
ruminate ! Read and ruminate ! A book that 
gives no cud to chew is scarcely worth 
reading once ; a book worth reading, of which 
one does not chew the cud, has scarcely been 
read. 

To end, let us lay up in mind a bracing 
word from John Stuart Mill : " They who 
know how to employ opportunities will often 
find that they can create them, and what we 
achieve depends less on the amount of time 
we possess than on the use we make of our 
time. Several great things which this genera- 
tion is destined to do will assuredly be done 
by persons for whom society has done far less, 
to whom it has given far less preparation, than 
those whom I am now addressing." If that 
be true in England, how much more true here 
in the Land of Opportunity ! Work, Society, 
Books, — with these three teachers, and a will 
to get the best from them, culture without 
college is possible, and possible for me. 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

by/ 
AETHUE M. TSCHTJDY. 



Endurance is the crowning quality, 

And patience all the passion of great hearts. 

— Lowell. 

I walked one morn and met a brier, 
Sharper than blades of fire : 
The morning sky flushed roses. 
Fie, fie, thou thorny provocation ! 
I'll set thy angry habitation 
Blooming with posies. 

Against thy barbed and bristling fence 
I hurl my heart, till thence 
Bleed miracles of power: 
Then on thy prickles, will ye, nill ye, 
With wonder or with shame to fill ye, 
I'll grow a flower. 

— James Vila Blake. 

It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our 
wrestling, if we won nothing but our old selves at the 
end of it — if we could return to the same blind loves, 
the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts 
of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over 
blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that 
Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepres- 
sible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thank- 
ful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible 
force, only changing its form, as all forces do, and 
passing from Pain into Sympathy — the one poor 
word which includes all our best insight and our best 
love, *— George Eliot* 

(34) 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 



Phe man who exclaimed, " I accept the 
* universe," is to be laughed at for his 
conceit or approved for his philosophy accord- 
ing to the point from which his exclamation 
is viewed. If the assertion were made in all 
reverence and seriousness, it surely must be 
looked upon as most profoundly religious. 
Nine-tenths of all professing Christians in this 
Christian land, nine-tenths of all religious 
people in the world, do not accept the 
universe. 

One of the most deeply religious men of 
the world, — one of the fathers of the true 
faith, — the noble Epictetus, made it his pre- 
eminent aim to persuade men to take the 
inevitable things of life faithfully and lovingly. 
That is truly to accept the universe. But how 
many people do accept^ after this fashion, what 



36 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

is inevitable ? How many accept thus the 
drought which has halved their crop, or the 
malaria which has stolen the bloom from their 
cheeks, — or even the rain which has stopped 
their picnic? The highest ascent in religious 
practice, the profoundest reach of religious 
theory, must be achieved before a man does in 
truth accept the universe. But then he knows 
what is the peace passing understanding! 

This acceptance of the universe carries with 
it an acceptance of the events of life, an 
acceptance of people,— above all, an acceptance 
of ourselves. We, too, are part of the 
inevitable, — we with our inherited fortunate or 
unfortunate dispositions ; with impulses, good 
or bad, that took their rise in remote ancestors ; 
we whose physical atoms obey the pull of 
gravity like all other atoms ; we in whom the 
struggle betwixt inward function and outward 
circumstance is waged as in all other organic 
bodies. And we — each of whom is a micro- 
cosm, a universe in little — must accept our- 
selves if we do in truth accept the larger 
universe; must bear with ourselves faithfully 
and lovingly, as we bear with soil and seasons, 
with stormy Marches and atomic changes. 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 37 

" For man hath all which Nature hath, but more, 
And in that more lie all his hopes of good." 



Consider even the matter of physical form 
and feature. Jesus tells us that our stature 
is fixed for us by forces beyond our control. 
In a broad way this declaration is unquestion- 
able, although there are vices which, if indulged 
in, will dwarf a man's size, and occupations 
which, if their influence be not corrected, will 
crook or stunt a man's body. These allowances 
made, it remains true that no amount, either 
of virtue or hygiene, can cause a man to grow 
tall who is fated by inheritance to remain 
short, or give light hair and rosy cheeks to a 
woman dowered by birth with a darker beauty. 
Within these broad limits stands the physical 
self which a man or woman must learn to 
accept faithfully and lovingly, or be forever 
barred from one of the highest felicities of 
religion. And I know that the issue at stake 
here is not small. Laugh you may, at the 
folly of sighing over one's looks, yet it is 
not a slight but a weighty folly. Some of 
the bitterest moments of rebellion that many 
souls pass through are the moments when 



38 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

they reject, revile arid hate their own looks. 
Where envying and strife are, says the good 
St. James, there is not the wisdom that 
descendeth from above, but confusion and 
every evil work. Yet, of all envying, what 
is more bitter, what leaves the heart more in 
confusion, than this which is involved when 
a man rebels against his ugly features or his 
insignificant person ? Surely, however, here is 
practical impiety; for here is rejection of and 
contempt for that part of the universe which 
comes nearest and counts most to the man. 
If there is one thing which such a man must 
do if he is ever to gain the peace of God, it 
is to learn to accept himself: tall or short, 
stout or thin, with abundant locks or bald 
crown, with dull or flashing eyes, sallow or 
rosy cheeks: accept himself as he is, account 
it right, and give thanks. 

Not an easy act of faith, this, — true; but 
one which the masters of the world achieved 
before they attained the felicity of true 
children of God. 

And as it is with looks, so is it with 
talents. A man must accept what ability he 
has ; and be contented therewith, if he would 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 39 

not lose one great opportunity for happiness. 
But this he cannot do, you may reply, because 
no man can be happy if he believes himself 
inferior. According to De Tocqueville, "the 
passion for equality in democratic communities 
is ardent, insatiable, insistent, invincible." 
And, I would add, it is not political equality 
alone that is thus ardently demanded, but 
intellectual equality as well, moral equality; 
that equality which will enable a man to feel 
himself the peer of any other man. 

I would say not a word against this passion 
for equality. In it I see not only vast 
promise of incessant effort to improve, but 
also a stern rebuke to the thoughtlessness 
which ignores or underrates the point wherein 
equality or superiority does actually exist. A 
rebuke of this kind I myself once received. 
The " Teutonic" was in mid-ocean. The day 
had been cold, the breeze stiff, and the good 
ship was plunging through an angry sea. 
Suddenly, in the gloom of the evening, the 
top-sail broke away, and was quickly blown 
into streamers. The boatswain's shrill whistle 
leaped above the warring of the wind and 
sea; the sailors, in response, filed stolidly on 



40 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

deck, climbed the swaying mast, edged their 
way out on the slippery arm, and, standing 
firmly there while the great ship swung them 
wildly to and fro almost into the trough of 
the foaming wave, they gathered in the 
tattered sail, worked their way safely back- 
ward to the mast and downward to the deck, 
apparently as unconcerned as if they were 
treading the walks of firm-set streets. In 
their act they accomplished what not a man 
among the distinguished doctors, lawyers, pro- 
fessors and ministers whom we had aboard 
could have done. If, now, these royal sailors 
felt in their inmost soul a something which 
would permit them to own themselves no 
man's inferior, shall we say they acted with 
reason, or without ? Difference they would of 
course acknowledge; inability to do hundreds 
of things as well as others do them; but 
inferiority at every point, inferiority in essential 
nature, taken in its widest bearing, I doubt 
if it were possible for them or for any other 
human being to acknowledge. 

Here I find my first reason why every man 
should accept his talents and be content 
therewith. In some directions those talents 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 41 

are excellent; they make him a peer of the 
realm. I know they do not so exalt him in 
the conventional ranking set down by bine- 
books, or in the hasty judgments which 
neighbor passes upon neighbor. But both of 
these classifications are discredited constantly 
by the issue of events and by the insight of 
wisdom. Many an accident on the street 
exalts the lowly and humbles the proud; 
many a disease or distress shows that power 
exists not where the blue-books pretend that 
it should exist exclusively, but where the 
instinct of democracy places it, — in the mass 
of men; in all men. 

How inadequate may be even the most 
trusted measurements of intellectual and moral 
value, we are being taught by the changed 
estimates which the modern method of writing 
history is setting upon men and events. 
These later and better histories are reducing 
kings, generals, and statesmen, to a lower rank, 
and exalting inventors, students, farmers, and 
mechanics, to a higher. They teach that the 
destiny of states waits not on one kind of 
work, but upon all kinds ; that the cutting 
of a canal may have consequences as far- 



42 accepting ourselves. 

reaching as the winning of a battle; that the 
discovery of a bleaching process may more 
than compensate for the loss of a colony. 
When we sit in judgment upon ourselves we 
need to judge in the spirit of these later 
histories. If we could discharge our minds of 
the narrow, temporary, conventional ideas of 
worth, and recognize the truth that every 
necessary work may be greatly done ; that each 
human being is endowed with special gifts 
for some one or more certain but unfamed 
posts of honor, we should find good reasons 
why every man should look upon his own 
ability and reverence and accept it with 
cheerfulness. 

But, you exclaim, this is talking vaguely. 
Here we have, on one hand, men who do 
telling work at every turn : there, on the other, 
those who fail at whatever they attempt. Is 
it possible for these latter to be content and 
accept themselves with gratitude ? I hope 
not. Occasion for discontent with himself 
every man has ; and so long as a man sees 
that he is blundering he ought to have the 
grace to condemn himself vigorously; there 
is no other known way of increasing the 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 43 

sum total of talent in the world. But let 
the discipline be administered in faith, and 
cheerfully. Let him who recognizes his 
weakness not lose heart. Let him, like a true 
lover, take himself for better or for worse. 

Suppose this self be poor in wit, in talent 
to create or appreciate, — what then ? This, 
I answer: accept it cheerfully, nothing doubt- 
ing, as a skilful teacher accepts a backward 
pupil, saying to yourself, My work is to turn 
this dullard self into a wise and ready man. 
In "the sounding labor-house vast of being," 
my task is to transform my own folly into 
wisdom. And every man has that task set 
him; only it is not the same kind of folly — 
happily for the world — that each is given to 
transform. Here is the millionaire, whose 
talent for accumulation needs little mending; 
here the great orator, the poet, and the 
philosopher, whose talents in their ways need 
no bettering. But, in other ways, what 
improvement these men are all called upon 
to make ! what stupidity, in sawing a board, 
driving a horse, speaking to a child, treating 
a wife, do they exhibit ! In the household 
even of their shining talents, the poor, maimed, 



44 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

dull, ugly child has not been omitted. It is 
there to be cared for with exceeding care; it 
is there to be changed by love and patience 
and wisdom into a strong, alert, noble man. 
If they are to be truly thankful to God for 
their household of talents, they must be 
thankful for the defective as well as the 
perfect; must accept the imperfect, indeed, 
as their grandest opportunity, their dearest 
blessing, since it enables them to be co-workers 
with God in the fashioning of that toward 
which all creation moves — a pure, perfect 
soul. 

And I believe we ought to accept ourselves 
even in our wickedness in this same spirit. 
If we believe in the universe, if we believe 
in God, we must believe there was some good 
reason for planting men in this world in their 
imperfect state. There prevails too largely 
the feeling, either implied or expressed, that 
the best thing God could have done was to 
have planted here a world filled with perfect 
men and women. The very conception of 
heaven as it used to be held, with its spotless 
saints and untemptable angels, was an uncon- 
scious arraignment of God for what he had 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 45 

made possible in this world. The only way 
in which we can retrieve that unconscious 
accusation against God is to realize that not 
perfection reached but perfection pursued is 
the best possible state in which man or angel 
can exist. Once we attain unto this, which 
I believe to be the nobler theology, then we 
have ample reason for accepting ourselves 
with gladness, wicked though we be. If the 
truth should be forced upon us that there is 
a deep vein of cowardice, or deceit, or lust, in 
our heart, shall we thereupon be utterly cast 
down and put out of all conceit and pride in 
ourself ? I opine not. This wickedness reveals 
the essential work we were put into this 
world to do. It shows us where our character 
yet remains to be made. It marks the point 
at which our ancestors left the task of soul- 
creating unfinished. It discovers the incom- 
pleted statue which God has handed on to us 
to chisel at. Why, then, shall we not receive 
this God-assigned task cheerfully ? Why not 
accept this much -to -be -bettered self with 
gladness ? 

What is here said is not intended to 
weaken for one instant the strain of con- 



46 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

science or of culture. If we truly accept 
ourselves we accept conscience and all. The 
human self viewed in its broadest outlines 
includes, together with the powerful impulses 
which lead to what is low, the incessant 
drawing which lifts to what is high. To 
accept that first part of one's self to the 
exclusion of this second part, and be content, 
is what makes a man a villain, dissolute, or a 
hypocrite. But to know that one's nature is 
full of ignorance and wickedness against 
which culture and conscience must wage a 
ceaseless warfare, and be content to fight the 
good fight, — this makes a man wise, happy, 
and devout. Believe me, there is a sense in 
which it is the height of presumption to be 
dissatisfied because you are in part ignorant 
and wicked. Jesus exclaimed, "Why callest 
thou me good? There is none good but one, 
that is God." To rebel against our wicked 
nature is to assert a claim to that which is 
the prerogative of the Almighty alone. I 
would have earnest people who grow morbid 
over their faults think of this. They ought 
to be a little more modest; they ought to be 
willing to be one of the great democracy of 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 47 

erring souls, not moan because they do not 
belong to an aristocracy of souls made perfect. 
In good time, we may dare believe, the great 
laws of conscience and culture will lift all 
men nearer to that blessed rank; but in the 
present, we may doubt not, some splendid 
use is being served in men's democratic 
incompleteness. 

For a possible instance, do we not take too 
short a view if we look at either our virtues 
or our vices in the perspective of our own 
lives alone ? There is a sense in which a 
man as an individual does not exist at all, 
just as there is a sense in which the heart 
does not exist as a separate entity. The 
heart is truly a heart only when it is one 
organ in a great organism, — giving and 
taking, having its very life and being in the 
whole of which it is an integral part. So 
with you and me. We do not live to 
ourselves alone ; by ourselves alone we are 
not. We live by and in and for the state, 
the neighborhood, the family. How may we 
be of greatest use as an organ in this social 
organism ? If it be best for the whole that 
in this present period we should be strong in 



48 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

one trait and weak in another, in order that 
we may balance or offset or be an object- 
lesson to some one opposite in character, why- 
may we not be content with our incomplete- 
ness, biding the time when God shall give us 
another part to play ? "I am debtor both to 
the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to 
the wise and unwise." I think Paul should 
have added, "both to the righteous and to 
the unrighteous." For where is the man who 
does not owe part of his moral growth to 
the influence which the sins of others have 
had upon him ? I never see a drunkard 
reeling through the street but the sight 
deepens my horror of intemperance ; I never 
hear another tell a lie but I am shamed and 
disgusted for every lie I have told; I never 
witness an outbreak of vicious temper without 
gaining an added power of self-control over 
my own temper. Am I then not debtor to 
the wicked ? 

Correspondingly, if I am thus indebted to 
the wickedness of others, are they not indebted 
to my wickedness ? Is God not making the 
wrath of men to praise him ? Shall I 
not then accept myself cheerfully ? Under 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 49 

Nature's evolutionary processes, shall I not 
look upon myself, even in my incompleteness, 
as a helpful factor in the universal progress ? 

Truly, for you or me to use such doctrine 
as this to lull our conscience to sleep in the 
matter of some sin which it is possible for 
us to throw off, would be monstrous. But to 
use the doctrine to save ourselves from 
morbidness concerning our shortcomings ; to 
encourage us under our repeated failures in 
our aspirings after the impossible ; to give us 
the humility to praise God for the great gift 
of being, though there be dross mixed with 
its gold, — thus to use the doctrine seems to 
me not monstrous but the part of highest 
wisdom. Some way must be found by which 
the world of erring men can come to accept 
themselves lovingly and reverently, and this 
doctrine opens the way. 

And it opens a way, too, by which they can 
come gladly to accept themselves in age and 
sickness. A proud man is likely to feel a 
certain contempt for himself when sick. Or, 
if he turn valetudinary, and take a certain 
pride in his sickness, then the world holds 
him in contempt. And, of all hard things, 



50 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

we know that to learn to grow old gracefully 
is one of the hardest. Hard, very hard is it 
to bear gracefully the failing of the senses, 
the bending of the back, the wrinkling of the 
face, the blearing of the eyes. But sickness 
and old age are what you and I must learn 
to accept, and accept graciously if we are 
indeed to accept ourselves. This is that 
awful inevitable for which Epictetus tried so 
ardently to prepare us. 

Here, moreover, our own will plays little 
part, or plays it only in a far-reaching way. 
Here our being passes largely from reign of 
the moral into the reign of natural law. 
Here vital, chemical and physical processes 
take us in hand, and make us not wholly, but 
largely, what we are. Here, therefore, it is 
primarily a question whether we can willingly 
accept ourselves as the laws of God fashion 
us. 

To grow gray, that is our doom. To detect 
the hand become unsteady; to observe the 
memory fail; to discover an organ that is 
defective ; or to find out the predisposition 
along which the fatal disease will creep, — 
this is to know ourselves. And to accept the 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 51 

selves so known, with undaunted courage, and 
to do our work in the world nevertheless, 
with steadfast faith in God's love, — this, 
methinks, is to attain the measure of the 
stalwart man. Emerson, in his address on 
the history of the town of Concord, declares 
that what chiefly interested him in the annals 
of its early wars is the grandeur of spirit 
exhibited by a few Indian chiefs. One, in 
the midst of awful torture, being asked how 
he liked the war, replied : " I find it as 
sweet as sugar to Englishmen." There was 
a true hero; and there was shown the spirit 
which you and I must have, when the 
tortures of age and disease come upon us, if 
we are to take our place among the sublime 
victors who have accepted every joy and 
every misery which pertains to the inevitable 
self, and find the acceptance sweet. 

If, however, we are thus really to find the 
blessedness latent in these hard passages of 
our lives, we must beware, again, of taking 
too short-sighted a view. Not the least part 
of that charm which inheres in the philosophic 
mind is due to its power of contemplating 
events in their remote bearings, and so of 



52 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

discovering purposes and benefits which do 
not appear to shorter vision. In the case of 
disease, for instance, there appears to the 
short vision only the physical suffering and 
the social derangements which it causes, — 
business injured, housekeeping disturbed, 
pleasures interrupted, sleep lost, beauty 
marred. But to the long vision there appears 
something far different — something the most 
glorious to be named. For has not sickness 
brought into play the tenderest of all human 
emotions ? has it not given scope to the most 
beautiful self-sacrifice ? has it not stimulated 
the human mind to some of its grandest 
efforts and bequeathed to heroism some of 
its sublimest names ? If, then, to be ill 
is to contribute to such issues, who would 
not look upon himself, even in illness, as 
acceptable ? 

I know how bitter is the medicine here 
commended to fevered lips. It is almost like 
urging us to be proud of humiliation; to be 
glad of weakness. The world is accustomed 
to praise the hero; what praise has it ever 
bestowed upon him who calls out the 
heroism? Of Florence Nightingale it has 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 53 

written volumes : what of the stricken soldiers 
who gave the heroine her opportunity? They, 
through the weakness which brought them 
to death's door, made the heroism possible. 
Looking at themselves as a part of the 
completed drama of human life, had they not 
reason to be content that it was given them 
to be necessary if supine actors in so glorious 
a triumph? If to us the lot has fallen to be 
the invalids whose need of service gives the 
strong and tender their opportunity to serve, 
can we not accept our lot and be glad ? 
Through us is enlarged the splendor of 
human life. Is not that much ? 

And there is more yet to observe in this 
connection, if we have the long vision. 
Especially is there more to observe in con- 
nection with old age. " Everything is pros- 
pective, and man is to live hereafter/' said 
Emerson. It is the constant shutting of 
one's eyes to that distant prospect which 
makes it so hard for people in old age to 
accept themselves. They cannot keep in 
mind that every stage of life affords some 
needful experience to a soul destined to 
infinite development. They think of old 



54 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 



age as the passing away of power, forgetting 

that 

u Age brings opportunity no less 
Than Youth, though in another dress." 

A man who has failed in business, and 
finds the seventies stealing upon him, is likely 
to feel that he has staked his all and lost. 
While he holds such a view of himself, self- 
contempt is inevitable. And it will be 
inevitable to millions unless they can grasp 
and hold a view of human destiny which 
extends beyond the confines of earth. The 
greater number of old people are poor or sick 
or obscure. If death brought the conclusion 
of all opportunity, their lot would indeed be 
anything but satisfactory. But if a man 
believes that it does not bring the conclusion 
of all opportunity, he will scorn to measure 
his worth by what he is able to achieve in 
seventy paltry years. He will hold that these 
years, even the latest of them, are mere years 
of youth. One decade, he will say, exercises 
one set of faculties ; another decade, another ; 
but, be it the first or last of his earth-term, it 
is but a preparation still, some opening scene 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 55 

of the first act in Life's drama. Having 
infinite capacities, the soul needs infinite 
experiences. The soul needs the delight of 
a first love, but needs no less the sorrow 
of a last grief. An old man bearing up 
courageously under the biting pangs of sciatica 
is as glorious a sight as the young athlete 
dashing to an Olympic victory. Courage and 
endurance are needed in both contests, and if 
the soul be immortal it is a matter of no 
moment whether these virtues be given their 
testing when the body is young and lithe or 
when it is old and stiff. 

To a humanity which measures the worth 
of life by the opportunities of earth, the 
possibilities of old age will not be looked 
forward to as desirable or honorable; but to 
a humanity which measures value in the light 
of eternity, old age with its rich and peculiar 
experiences will be looked upon as infinitely 
precious. " Certain it is," exclaims Martineau, 
"that to the open mind fresh gleams enter 
to the last; strange stirrings of diviner 
sympathies, waves of thin transparent light 
flitting through the spaces of the aged mind, 
like the aurora of the north across the wintry 



56 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 

sky." A man who can look upon this flitting 
light as a 

" forward-reaching sense 
Of some more noble permanence" 

will, even amid the deprivations of old age, 
still be able cheerily to accept himself. For 
the fighting of battles, the conduct of business, 
the offices of friendship, the duties of a 
household, he may have ceased to be of large 
value ; but for the reaping of those experiences 
which are to send him forth into some other 
" sounding labor-house vast of being," he knows 
himself to be still rich in capacity; justly 
to be honored of himself and of all who can 
properly estimate the worth of the soul. 

It may be that, after all has been said that 
can be said, some of us may still remain 
dissatisfied with ourselves. But let even this 
fact be turned — though it may seem paradox- 
ically — into a reason for accepting our 
imperfect selves with gladness. This insatiable 
desire for better and ever better achievement 
is the strongest proof of all that there enters 
into our being an element of the infinite. At 
our command are boundless resources; our 



ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 57 

achievements, reckoned as God would reckon 
them, are many and priceless ; yet, the higher 
we climb, the more we aspire ! It must be 
because we are divine. Nothing less than 
infinite being could be so insatiable. It is 
the deep within our own soul calling to the 
deep beyond — it is the angel forever homeless 
amid the human — it is the God dissatisfied 
with the man — that bars us from perfect 
content. 

Who, then, remembering his divine descent, 
and looking forward to the sublime heritage 
into which he is yet to enter, will not 
henceforth bear himself with noble pride ! 
In each is more than royal blood, and before 
each lies a grander than kingly state. 




BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

Paul K. Fkothingham. 



Grant me to become beautiful in the inner man. 

— Socrates. 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 
When duty whispers low, " Thou must," 

The youth replies, " I can." 

— Emerson. 

Take thou no thought for aught save truth and right, 

Content, if such thy fate, to die obscure. 

Youth fails, and honors; fame may not endure, 
And lofty souls soon weary of delight. 

Keep innocence; be all a true man ought; 
Let neither pleasure tempt nor pain appall. 

Who hath this, he hath all things, having nought; 
Who hath it not, hath nothing, having all. 

— Lewis Morris. 

" To get on, to get honor, to get honest." 

— Quoted by Archdeacon Farrar. 

An ideal perfection is the only ultimate reason for 
existence. If we do not turn our faces thitherward, 
our lives, however full of shows and business and 
plans and works they may be, are without rational 
significance ; while if we do thus turn our faces, there 
are at bottom no more puzzles or cares or anxieties 
for us; in our heart of hearts there is a peace and joy 
that no reverses or disappointments can ever disturb 
or mar. — William M. Salter. 

(60) 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 



The subject of Moral Beauty is so high, it 
* suggests such divine possibilities, that one 
must confess at the outset the impossibility 
of doing it justice. We all recall, for we all 
have been strangely attracted by, the old Jewish 
precept, " Worship the Lord in the beauty of 
holiness." That, we instinctively feel, is the 
very highest kind of worship. Here Pagan 
and Christian, infidel and believer, are at one. 
Socrates, it is said, once breathed the prayer, 
" Grant me to become beautiful in the inner 
man." And our own Emerson said he looked 
for the coming of a new teacher who " shall 
show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing 
with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy." 

There is nothing unusual, therefore, nor 
strained, in applying the term beautiful to 



62 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

character. Just as we speak of certain 
aspects of nature as beautiful, or certain 
forms of physical life or development, so 
there are certain types of goodness and 
ethical development that are fitly described 
by no other word. A thought may be more 
beautiful than a thing; and a feeling more 
full of mystic charm than any outward 
manifestation. There are some characters 
that are just as decidedly beautiful as an 
autumn sunset is beautiful, or a bit of 
landscape, or a flower with its rich and 
delicate tints. Goodness, that is to say, 
is, under certain conditions, beautiful: or, 
rather, Goodness at its best — in its truest 
development — is B eauty . 

The identity of the two in human thought 
is almost as old as thought itself; as 
old, certainly, as deep and intelligent and 
earnest thought. In his " History of European 
Morals" Mr. Lecky tells us that "the close 
connection between the good and the beautiful 
has been always felt, so much so that both 
were in Greek expressed by the same word; 
and in the philosophy of Plato moral beauty 
was regarded as the archetype of which all 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 63 

visible beauty is only the shadow or image." 
"We all feel," Mr. Lecky adds, "that there 
is a strict propriety in the term Moral 
Beauty. We feel that there are different 
forms of beauty which have a natural 
correspondence to different moral qualities, 
and much of the charm of poetry and 
eloquence rests upon this harmony." 

Before presenting the elements that go to 
make the beauty of the moral life, a broad 
and necessary limitation should be noticed. 
It is this : 

The mere fact that a life is moral does 
not insure that it is beautiful. In fact, some 
perfectly true and upright and faithful people 
lack perceptibly this very quality. A man 
may keep all the commandments ; his actions 
may be approximately faultless ; he may ask, 
with reason, "What lack I yet?" and at 
the same time he may really lack this one 
thing — the element of beauty. For this is 
an added element. 

Kor do we ignore this distinction in our 
customary way of speaking. We describe 
certain people as having strong characters, 
or energetic characters, or pure and r lofty 



64 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

characters : but when we speak of a beautiful 
character we mean something more than any- 
one of these, — more even, it may be, than 
the sum of them. We refer to a certain 
mystic halo or subtle grace or delicate aroma 
that pervades the whole life and seems 
to transfigure all the actions that come 
from it. 

But just what are the attributes that 
constitute moral beauty ? This is the utmost 
we may attempt to show: we can never 
describe or define beauty itself. Whether it 
be the beauty of a graceful wild animal, 
or of a piece of music, or of a bit of 
sculpture, it is equally indescribable. Emerson 
recognized this fact when he apostrophized 
it as 

" Thou eternal fugitive 
Hovering over all that live." 

We feel rather than understand the beauty 
of a human life. In the clear consciousness 
of it we are not accustomed to ask why or 
how it is. The mere fact is enough. There 
are some persons whom we feel at once to 
be possessed of a certain charm. We are 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 65 

subdued and chastened by their presence, even 
as we are subdued and chastened when we 
stand before a Madonna by Raphael or 
Murillo. There seems something within and 
around these people that is imparted to us 
in a smile or a touch of the hand, or in a 
look from the eyes or a casually spoken 
word. We may not know them well; we 
may not be cognizant of any great work they 
have done or are doing; we may not even 
have heard that they are distinguished for 
integrity or honesty of purpose : but, for all 
that, we realize that they have somewhat 
about them which, for want of a better term, 
we call beauty of character. 

I. There is probably no one thing that 
contributes more, in a superficial way, to 
make people beautiful morally, than symmetry, 
or evenness of development; or what may be 
better called harmonious completeness. 

This is what so often contributes to beauty 
in the outward world, and in all forms of 
physical life. We consider a statue beautiful 
which is symmetrical — well-proportioned. It 
is the same with the human figure. It is 
this, too, which makes one animal beautiful 



66 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 



rather than another. The nice adjustment of 
means to ends, the full and equal play of 
life in all its parts, is what charms us, for 
instance, in the greyhound or the deer; 
whereas, the clumsiness, the heavy unevenness, 
the apparent lack of adaptation, is what robs 
such a creature as the elephant of all 
attractiveness. 

It is not difficult to see how precisely this 
applies to character. If there is one thing 
that robs character of all beauty, it is lack of 
harmonious, symmetrical development. Where 
great gaps exist; when violent outbursts may 
come at any moment; when no dependence 
can be placed that the good-will of to-day will 
not be succeeded by indifference to-morrow, 
there surely will be found no beauty. 

And most of us know people who are 
unbeautiful for this very reason. We cannot 
depend upon them. As friends they lack 
constancy, and that most attractive and 
winning trait, loyalty. As acquaintances they 
are prone to take offence and consider 
themselves slighted. Each time we meet 
them, we are obliged to put out delicate 
feelers^ a§ certain plants do, in order to 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 67 

discover just what their mood or general 
attitude is to-day. 

Then, too, there are people who are so one- 
sided, so unbalanced, so full of hot prejudices 
and whims, — though all the time well-meaning 
and upright, — that in talking with them we 
find ourselves always endeavoring to avoid 
certain subjects. We feel as if we were on 
the edge of a volcano. "How will he 
interpret this remark ? " we think. " I hope 
she was not offended by that," we say. It 
does not need to be said that such people 
lack moral beauty. They may be good, 
honest, faithful; but they are not beautiful 
in character. 

The people who are this have, first of all, 
symmetry, evenness of development. As the 
saying is, We always know where to find 
them. We can always trust them not to be 
offended at fancied slights. In disposition, as 
in outward action, they are equable and 
uniform. And the beauty of such character as 
this is, literally, the "beauty of holiness." For 
the literal meaning of holiness is wholeness. 
The holy man or woman — though we too 
often forget this — j§ -the whole man. Qr 



68 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

woman. That is to say, it is the man or 
woman who is well-rounded, who is evenly 
proportioned, who can not only be depended 
upon by others, but who can depend upon 
himself not to be overcome by weakness 
of temper, or influenced by trivial daily 
temptations. 

This, too, is what is meant by the " full- 
grown" or "perfect" man. The two are 
synonymous. A person cannot in any true 
sense approximate perfection who is so dwarfed 
and puny in some of his characteristics that 
he sways and falls before the storms of his 
own strong and selfish impulses. 

We must beware, therefore, of carrying 
over into the moral world the tendency that 
so predominates in the spheres of industry 
and education. In them we aim to specialize. 
We set our workmen to perfecting minute 
portions of a manufactured article, such as 
making, not whole pins, but the heads or 
points of pins; not whole shoes, but portions 
of the soles or portions of the uppers of 
shoes : and we call those workmen skilled 
who do their one part well. In colleges 
we have our elective systems; and he is 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 69 

considered best equipped for life's battle who 
knows some single subject perfectly. 

Not so in character, however. Would you 
approach moral beauty ? Would you make 
your character more and more beautiful ? 
Then make yourself more and more full of 
harmony and proportion. Do not exaggerate 
and add to the development of traits that 
are already strong within you, and well 
marked, even though they are noble traits ; 
but find out where you are weak, study the 
parts that are undeveloped, and encourage 
them into fuller, richer, better life. 

II. The beauty of the moral life is always 
attended by a certain peace or repose, which 
seems to breathe of attainment and to tell of 
struggles that are ended because victory has 
been won. 

It is said that two of the greatest pieces 
of sculpture the world has ever known are 
the statue of Zeus by Phidias, — to die 
without having seen which was considered a 
calamity, — and the "Moses" of Michelangelo. 
Yet in both, so I have read, the artists 
portrayed power in repose. The statues 
represent the serenity of conscious strength 



70 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

as contrasted with its active employment. 
And it is precisely this repose, or serenity 
of power, that goes to form beauty of 
character. 

A life is most moral when it is struggling 
with temptation. It is beautiful, however, 
only when the struggle is practically ended 
and the peace of victory declared. Thus, 
the actual morality of an act is said to be 
measured by the amount of difficulty in the 
face of which it is performed, — just as the 
skill of the oarsman is evinced by the 
magnitude of the waves in the midst of 
which he can keep his boat afloat, or the 
prowess of the fighter by the number of 
enemies against whom he can successfully 
defend himself. But the element of beauty 
comes only when the skiff of life has been 
rowed across the waves and rides in the 
quiet harbor of assured mastery over all 
life's eddies of passion and whirlpools of 
despair. 

We shall realize clearly the truth of this 
distinction if we consider for a moment 
certain actual characters of the past or 
present and see wherein their relative beauty 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 71 

lies. Take for instance two lives that were 
both strongly moral, both in conscious touch 
with eternal verities, both exerting deep and 
wide-reaching influence on their age. I refer 
to Carlyle and Emerson, — who have been 
aptly termed "the frown and the smile of 
the nineteenth century." 

How universally we point to the life of 
Emerson as the more distinctly beautiful ! 
The character of Carlyle was grand and 
noble, full of intense power and whirling 
indignation against the wrongs and abuses 
in society, strenuous and stern for what was 
just and true. But that very strenuousness 
and identification with contest and bitter 
struggle makes his life appear to us less full 
of beauty. The very calmness, the quiet, 
placid self-containment of Emerson makes us 
give his life the higher rank. Emerson was 
his own "new Teacher," and his whole 
character spoke of the identity between the 
Ought, or Duty, and Beauty itself. 

Thus it always is. The genuine beauty 
of morality comes as a final result of moral 
struggles. It is attainment, not aspiration; 
fruition, not growth. For this reason, sorrow 



72 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

and suffering, hardships and trials, are spoken 
of so often as beautifiers of character. True, 
they do not always result thus. When the 
sorrow is too heavy to be borne; when the 
trial strains our powers of endurance until they 
snap and leave us petulant and pessimistic; 
when the hardship is so great as to embitter 
us, then the result has been moral ugliness. 
Nor is there anything more gruesome in the 
moral life than the ugliness that has been 
generated thus. 

But when the victory is with the other 
side, then the result is, almost without 
exception, greater beauty. If we ponder over 
those persons who seem to us the most truly 
beautiful in character, we shall find them to 
be those who, in patience, have suffered and 
borne great weights of sorrow, difficulty, 
disappointment. Some one once said that he 
never saw a really beautiful face without 
thinking, "I wonder what special form of 
suffering or sorrow that person has been 
called upon to endure." So, I think, more 
than often, when we come into touch with 
persons who are, as we feel, really beautiful 
morally, we are conscious that in one form 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 73 

or another they have fought with nature or 
with fate, and, after a bitter, perhaps a 
protracted struggle, have triumphed and are 
the peaceful masters of themselves. Around 
them floats a mystic light. And, as we are 
awed and quieted by any great masterpiece 
in art, so we feel a benediction descending 
upon us when we meet such characters. To 
live near them is perpetual encouragement; 
for there is power connected with this phase 
of beauty that weaves itself around us and 
lifts us into a calm serenity that is of and 
from itself. 

A striking anecdote illustrating this power 
is told in connection with one of those moods 
of popular frenzy through which Paris has 
so often passed. Great throngs of people, it 
is said, were surging through the streets and 
public squares. They were eager — frantic, 
indeed — for violence and bloodshed, and were 
rushing, swaying onward bent on hideous 
outrage. Suddenly a corner was reached and 
turned, and there, directly before them, — 
there as though it were stepping forward to 
meet them, — was the statue of Saint Vincent 
de Paul. Not one of that thirsting mob but 



74 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

knew the story of that saintly life. A 
strange hesitancy seized those raging souls. 
An unexpected sense of shame not only 
caught but held them. There was a vague 
struggle, a half-conscious effort to push ahead, 
and then the great crowd seemed to grow 
limp and wavering, until at last it melted 
apart, unnerved for violence. Something of 
the peace that formed the beauty of that 
pure life had stolen from his very statue and 
had mastered them. 

III. There are other things that contribute 
greatly to beauty of character, and even 
create it, like the lines and swift touches 
that seem suddenly at the last to transform 
and complete an entire picture. 

There is, for instance, the attribute of 
feeling ; of delicate, sensitive perception. No 
matter how gracefully developed a soul may 
be, no matter how much quiet, peaceful power 
it may have, without this it can have no 
genuine beauty. And by feeling, or sensitive- 
ness, is meant not the readiness with which 
we ourselves receive a hurt, but the quickness 
with which we perceive the possibility of 
not the delicacy that makes us 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. to 

over-sensitive personally, but the higher sort 
of delicacy that enables us to realize how 
others feel. Surely half the heart-aches of 
the world, and more than half its bitter 
and vindictive feelings, are the results of 
unintentional thrusts ; of careless, unconscious, 
but none the less genuine blows that we 
inflict on others. 

"Why will people be so foolish as to take 
offence ? " we often say. All too seldom we 
ask ourselves, "Why need we have been so 
thoughtless, and why cannot we in the future 
give more consideration to these people who 
do feel, and who suffer secretly ? " Xo more 
delicate beauty of character can be found 
than that which people have who are thus 
quick and sure to read the hopes, the pains, 
the sorrows of others. 

The friend we value most is the one who 
seems always to know how we feel, and why 
we feel so, and who is ready with generous 
sympathy and kindly help, as though actually 
seeing our heart-aches and counting our throbs 
of painful memory. Some people seem to 
have this quality of sensitiveness to others'* 
unspoken needs and feelings, in much the same 



76 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

way that some are sensitive to atmospheric 
changes. And this soul-sensitiveness can be 
cultivated. In large part it is habit. Nor 
is there, probably, any single feature, that 
can be more easily acquired by any one, 
which is at the same time so sure to impart 
a touch of genuine moral beauty. 

IV. Sensitiveness to others' feelings is of 
course but a phase of that larger and deeper 
quality which is the greatest of all character 
beautifiers. I refer to what is commonly 
called Love, but which, in this connection, 
may be better described as a humane and 
gentle spirit. Whoever has this, and has it 
fully, naturally, deeply, has many, if not most, 
of those other qualities without which beauty 
is never found. For love is ever the fulfilling 
of the law, and it gives to life that quiet 
peace, that gentle charm, of which all beauty 
is so eloquent. 

How poor and weak seem even our best 
phrases upon this subject ! How little we 
can suggest of the actual beauty that moral 
life is capable of possessing! Think of the 
noblest lives you have ever known or ever 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 77 

read of; count over all their virtues, all their 
graces, all their high and excellent qualities: 
they are all faint adumbrations of the central 
glory of its beauty. 

And as there is no higher, no more 
entrancing form of beauty than moral beauty, 
so there can be no higher calling for any one 
than to carve well the statue of his character, 
making it fair and beautiful of proportion. 
For this great end our powers were given 
us — our powers of steady endurance, of high 
ambition, of worthy appreciation. They are 
not ours simply to the end that we may carve 
out for ourselves huge fortunes, that shall 
melt away at the touch of death; nor to 
achieve proud reputations, though these are 
well. They are ours that we may shape 
ourselves in beauty. 

When we employ these powers on lower 
things we are like artists who waste their 
talents in idle and useless work. There is a 
suggestive incident told of Michelangelo. It 
is said that in January of 1494 a most 
unusual storm swept over Florence, leaving 
snow upon the ground from four to five feet 
deep, — a very exceptional occurrence in that 



78 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 

warm climate. The weak and worldly Piero 
de Medici was at that time ruler of the city, 
and his word was law. Seeing the snow he 
sent for Michelangelo, took him away from 
his workshop, where he was carving figures in 
enduring marble at which future generations 
should gaze in wonderment, and bade him 
form a snow-statue in the court-yard of 
the palace. When it was done, he was so 
delighted that he brought the artist to sit 
at his own table. 

Think of it ! the greatest creative genius 
in the world wasting its powers on material 
that another morning's sun would melt away. 
Yet so it often is in life. In obedience to 
our own selfish commands and foolish pride, 
and our worldly ambition, we put our hands 
to works and devote our energies to materials 
that are as fleeting as the mist, as unstable 
as the snow, and that vanish with the hour 
that gave them birth. But to shape our 
characters in beauty is an enduring work, 
that calls for reverent devotion. 

We bow humbly before those who can put 
upon the canvas the visions of beauty that 
float before their imaginations. We honor and 



BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 79 

remember those who could take the still, cold 
marble and chisel it into features full of holy 
feeling. But let the canvas be a human life, 
the vision of beauty a dream of purity, of 
integrity, of holiness, and how much grander 
is the result ! Before the artist of the soul 
we bow with deepest reverence. In the pres- 
ence of moral beauty we feel the holiest awe. 




MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 

BY 

Samuel M. Crothebs. 



They have half-way conquered Fate 
Who go half-way to meet her. 

— Lowell. 

When the bright sun shines, 

Then let thy heart be gay: 

But when the day declines, 

Let thy heart yield the cheerful ray 

Which it hath stored the live-long day. 

— James Vila Blake. 

What though the radiance which was once so bright 
Be now forever taken from my sight, 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower — 

We will grieve not, rather find 

Strength in what remains behind: 

In the primal sympathy 

Which, having been, must ever be; 

In the soothing thoughts that spring 

Out of human suffering; 

In the faith that looks through death, 
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

— Wordsworth. 

Whom neither shape nor danger can dismay, 
~Not thought of tender happiness betray ; 
Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 
Looks forward, persevering to the last, 
From good to better, daily self-surpassed. 

(82) 



MAKING THE BEST OF IT 



" The best is yet to be — 
The last of life, for which the first was made." 

— Brovming. 

Good, better, best,— that is the way life 
ought to be. But oue does not have to 
be much of a cynic, or to have lived very 
long, to doubt whether this is the common 
experience. To the majority of people life 
presents a decided anti-climax. It begins with 
the superlative. The youth craves the very 
best and most beautiful ; he is a devotee of 
the ideal; a believer in the perfect. And he 
believes that what he cares for must be his 
by right. It seems natural that to him 
should come the finest joys. He is not 
satisfied with what is merely good enough ; 



84 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 

he scorns the commonplace. So much does 
he live in the superlative that, were he not 
a complete optimist, he would be a complete 
pessimist. He cannot conceive of a middle 
ground. 

But with maturer years there comes a 
change. The man outgrows the illusion that 
the best things necessarily belong to him. 
Then he listens to expediency and common 
sense. I am not able, he says, to get the 
best things which I have longed for, — yet I 
need not take the worst. I must learn to 
get as much as I can from what may possibly 
be a bad bargain. I will compare one thing 
with another ; and practical wisdom consists 
in acting in the light of such comparison, 
and of habitually choosing the better rather 
than the worse. 

And here, it must be acknowledged, is 
the basis for much admirable and practical 
morality. It is the morality, however, not of 
the idealist, " whose soul sees the perfect," 
but of the man of good sense, who recognizes 
what is practicable. It is illustrated in the 
Old Testament book of Proverbs. Here we 
are told, not of the best, but only of the 



MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 85 

better. There is a cool comparison of one line 
of conduct with another, but no enthusiasm. 
Eighteousness is better than injustice; wisdom 
is better than folly; a lowly spirit is better 
than pride. 

This is the characteristic attitude of the 
man in active life who is engaged in balancing 
one thing against another. 

But there is still another stage of experience. 
The active life past, its interests begin to 
fail. The mind seeks something positive. 
The man says, I no longer claim as my right 
the best things; I no longer care to compare 
myself with others and to say that what I 
have is better than what they have. I must 
be content if I can say that I have found 
some things that are good. They may not be 
ideally good; they may not be comparatively 
good; yet such as they are they are mine, 
and I must accept them. Perhaps they are 
good enough — at any rate it will not help 
matters to call them bad. "When we grow 
old," some one has said, "we learn to conceal 
our griefs." 

The man I have in mind is not one 
who plunges into gloomy pessimism. He has 



86 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 

not swerved in his loyalty to righteousness. 
Only, as he goes on, the glow has faded 
away and he works under a leaden sky. Life 
has not fulfilled its first promise. He has no 
use, any more, for the superlative. He still 
obeys the moral law, but he has lost the 
spring of moral enthusiasm. 

But now, though this is a common experience, 
we need not accept it as necessary. I believe 
it is possible so to live that the superlative 
shall be at the end rather than at the 
beginning. Looking forward to such a life, 
one may say, "the best is yet to be." 

Our discovery of this kind of life comes 
in the very midst of our disappointment. 
When we fail in attaining what we most 
desire, we exclaim in a tone of resignation, 
"We must make the best of it." 

Could we but know it, that phrase contains 
a deeper meaning, that may transform our 
existence and bring victory from defeat. 

The youth says : " I shall receive the best 
things. They shall come to me without effort 
of my own. They are mine by right." And 
when they do not come thus, he feels that 
he has been cheated. 



MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 87 

The strong man says : " I will make the 
best of what I have." And in those words 
is the triumph of will over fate. 

For, the best things are not the things 
which we find, but the things which we 
make. They do not come to us unasked. 
They are the result of effort. God does 
not give us heaven; he only gives us the 
materials out of which we may make heaven. 
His best creations are those in which he 
works through man, inspiring his effort and 
enlisting his will. The most bountiful gifts 
of nature are not the best things. Nature 
furnishes but the raw material; man is the 
artist whose touch gives the imperishable 
value. 

Matthew Arnold's lines contain a truth to 
be pondered : 

"Know, man hath all that Nature hath, but more; 
And in that more lies all his hope of good. 

Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends." 

People have often dreamed of a primitive 
paradise where men dwelt in effortless bliss. 
But Milton, when he tried to picture Adam 



88 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 

and Eve driven out of the garden into the 
wide world, was, in spite of his theology, 
unable to make the event seem tragical. It 
came to them rather as an enfranchisement 
than as a curse. 

"Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them 
soon; 
The world was all before them, where to choose 
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." 

When the archangel tells Adam how, instead 
of the joys of ignorant innocence, he is to 
have henceforth the achievements of manly 
virtue, he adds, 

" Then wilt thou not be loth 
To leave this paradise, but shait possess 
A paradise within thee, happier far." 

The aim of all moral culture is to produce 
this paradise within us ; and the test of 
spiritual insight is in the perception that it 
is happier far than any paradise dependent 
on outward circumstances. 

Now, when we have come to the thought 
that the best things must be made, we see 
the true progression in life. One good thing 



MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 89 

after another is presented to us and taken 
away. These are but incentives and challenges 
to our creative spirits. So nature acts upon 
the artist. She does not satisfy him, she 
Stimulates his genius. She shows him glimpses 
of beauty to make him dream of something 
still more beautiful, and to set him to work 
to realize his dream. 

So youth gives but foretastes. It has its 
natural joys, which come unbidden, and which 
as unexpectedly vanish. But the lasting 
blessedness is a creation of the soul, which 
consciously gives itself to the work of making 
good things better, and which is not satisfied 
except with the service of the Best. 

We do not talk so much as people once 
did about men being born free. We see that 
true liberty is an achievement. One must 
earn it before he can truly enjoy it. 

When we see any very beautiful thing we 
are apt to say : How rare and costly must 
have been the materials out of which it was 
made. But the true artist can make beauty 
out of common things. His touch gives 
them worth. In this lies the meaning of 
the beatitudes. 



90 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 

We say that we desire happiness and it 
has not been given us. We have been 
cheated out of what belongs to us. 

The answer is : If you want happiness, 
why don't you make it ? All the materials 
are at your hands. You can make it, just as 
all the saints have made it. Do not stand 
any longer as victims of fate, but as creators 
of the future. 

The early Christians took the cross on 
which their master had suffered, and changed 
it from the symbol of shame to the symbol 
of salvation. So every one of us may do. 
We may use our very sorrows for the 
upbuilding of character. 

Let ours be the artist's perception. "Here 
is my life," let each of us say; "what can 
I make of it?" 

And the answer is, You can make, if you 
will, the very best thing of it. You have 
known what failure means, and pain, and 
disappointment. Out of your consciousness 
of personal loss you may have, created within 
you, a capacity for sympathy fine and far 
reaching. Because you have been acquainted 
with grief you may have patience and strength 



MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 91 

which will make you capable of truest service. 
The things you have lost were not the best; 
the best things are those which you may 
gain. Age crowns the work which youth 
had only begun. 

The blessed life is a growing life. It may 
grow to the end. assimilating new elements, 
and making, out of them, new grace. There 
are no circumstances without their divine 
possibilities. Each difficulty overcome is an 
increase of strength. The life of faithful 
service brings with it a deathless hope. TVe 
do not accept it with dull resignation as 
merely "good enough." It is full of high 
promise. Watching its upward course we 
feel sure that "the best is yet to be." 




WINTER FIRES. 

BY 

James M. Leighton. 



Earth's crammed with heaven, — 

But only he who sees takes off his shoes. 

— Mrs. Browning. 

Thou art not lone — there' s sunshine left. 

— Mendelssohn'' s Spring Songs. 

The rose blooms now. But man postpones, or re- 
members. He does not live in the present, but with 
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the 
riches that surround him, stands on tip-toe to foresee 
the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he 
too lives with Nature in the present, above time. 

— Emerson. 

Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go, 

While from the secret treasure-depths below, 

Fed by the skiey shower, 

And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high, 

Wisdom, at once, and Power, 

Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly ? 

Why labor at the dull mechanic oar, 

When the fresh breeze is blowing, 

And the strong current flowing, 

Bight onward to the Eternal Shore ? 

— A. H. Clough. 

In the heart we hear ever the ringing voice, 

" We were born for something better ! " 
And that inner voice, we may well believe, 
Will never the hoping soul deceive. 

— Schiller. 
(94) 




tt&fc 



WINTER FIRES. 



"The prologue of life is finished at twenty: then 
come five acts of a decade each, and the play is over; 
with now and then a pleasant or tedious afterpiece, 
when half the lights are put out and half the orches- 
tra is gone." — Oilier Wendell Holmes. 

"As age comes on I can cheer my own wintry 
days with sunbeams gathered from the Springtime of 
young people and from the smiling faces of children. 
This will save me from the shame of casting a shadow 
across their life; the light of my face will be a reflec- 
tion of their own." — Charles G. Ames. 



When I arose in the morning and looked 
out of my window upon the season's first 
snow-clad landscape, the scenes of the Winter 
previous were so vividly recalled that for a 
moment I found it hard to believe there had 



96 WIXTEE, FIRES. 

been any Summer. It seemed as if I had only 
dreamed in the night of long days and flowers 
and birds and out-of-door delights with friends, 
and that I had awakened to find the earth in 
the midst of Winter, just as it was when I fell 
asleep the evening before. The very tracks 
made by people early abroad looked familiar; 
the driving snow seemed normal and seasonable. 
There involuntarily arose in my heart the same 
longing for summer weather and fragrance, for 
busy nest-builders and honey-gatherers, that I 
always experience towards the end of long and 
cold Winters ; and I said, " I wish it were last 
March, and the Summer w^ere just ahead instead 
of receding behind me " — for there flashed just 
then through my mind the consciousness that a 
beautiful Summer, long in fact, and short only 
in fancy (because pleasures are fleeting), had 
intervened between the end of last Winter and 
the beginning of this : a Summer which I would 
gladly live over again because it brought so 
much happiness and so little sorrow to me. 

I do not remember so sudden and sharp a 
transition from Summer to Winter as this one 
of which I am writing. I do not recall ever 
seeing, in this latitude, tender plants spared so 



WIXTER FIRES. 97 

long by the autumn frosts ; their blooms visited 
by bees, as I saw them one day, and, the next, 
enshrouded in snow. It is not likely that this 
occurred, the year I am recording, for the first 
time, yet I venture to say it is a rare circum- 
stance. 

At any rate, now, the Summer was ended. 
All life in nature was, for a time, translated 
or suspended. Beauty and song and richness 
remained only in the storehouse of memory and 
the structure of character. The warmth and 
glow of Summer had given place to chill winds 
and shudderings. ]STow there was more night 
than day. 

But, though Summer carries away with it 
so much that is good and enjoyable, it does 
not leave us desolate. Winter brings us gifts 
upon its snowy wings, to compensate us for the 
deprivations to which it subjects us. The sun- 
beams which to-day reach us may fail to warm 
us sufficiently; but we build cheerful fires on 
our hearths, and maintain a glow and warmth 
which are not artificial, but are sunbeams stored 
ages ago in the coal-measures, and laid up year 
by year in the solid wood of the oaks and 
maples we prepare for our winter fires. Our 



98 WINTER FIRES. 

earth, turns its face away from the sun in mid- 
afternoon, and the long shadow settles down 
upon us ; but still the beams of the sun give 
us light through the oil in our lamps and 
the gas in our reservoirs, which are the sun- 
beams of long-past ages transformed and im- 
prisoned until the genius of man set them free 
and struck them once more into flame to supply 
his need. 

We take great comfort around our winter 
fires. There are joys and pleasures peculiar to 
long winter evenings which even the howling of 
the storm outside seems to enhance. Our winter 
advantages and pleasures are not so easy to gain, 
perhaps, as those of Summer. We cannot main- 
tain winter fires but by special efforts. We must 
at least trim our lamps and lay fuel on our 
hearths. In Summer, comfort may be found 
under the shade of a tree, without toil, and in 
the bounty of Nature; but in Winter it costs 
both toil and money to maintain our cosy 
corner. And much of the toil is of the nature 
of drudgery; for who likes to trim lamps and 
carry out ashes ? 

Yet our winter comforts and advantages, in 
some respects, surpass those of Summer. We 



WINTER FIRES. 99 

live a more intimate home-life about our winter 
fires than when we have all-out-of-doors in which 
to range. From touring and seeing we settle 
down to sociability and reading. Pleasures, 
instead of being sought in fields and woods, are 
brought in-doors. Instead of a posy-garden, 
where weeds persist and make much back-aching 
work, there are a few favorite plants in window- 
seats, the care of which seems to be more inti- 
mate than that bestowed upon garden-beds. 

Once we have kindled our winter fires, we 
settle down to the enjoyment of our comforts 
and pleasures, and serenely do our daily tasks, — 
and wait for the return of the balmy winds and 
perfect days of another Summer. 

To us all, if we live long enough, comes a 
time when we must light our winter fires, or sit 
cheerless and cold-hearted and regretful of life's 
Summer. When youth's fires are burned out, 
when its beauty is gone and its enthusiasm 
silenced, then must we light iv inter fires and sit 
in their glow and warmth. I can imagine no 
other chill and desolation equal to that suffered 
by the man or woman who has neglected to 
store, in mind and heart, fuel for the winter 
fire. One who has lived and served so that he 



100 WINTER FIRES. 

is loved by many; who has loved and worked 
and borne with a cheerful spirit ; who has treas- 
ured all the best of life in memory and built 
character of sound principles ; who has nourished 
faith in good and confidence that it will lead 
to a blessed destiny ; who, moreover, has estab- 
lished within his group of habits that of occu- 
pying the mind with reading and thought, and 
the hands with work and the heart with kind- 
liness for his fellow-men, — he has stored an 
abundance of fuel for the winter fire, which 
will give both light and warmth as it burns 
upon life's altar. 

Nothing is so cheerless as a winter • fire of 
soggy wood ; a sputtering, smoking hearth, with 
neither light nor warmth. Nor much better is 
the brief flash and faint glow produced by a 
handful of dry sticks thrown upon smouldering 
embers. The darkness which follows is blacker, 
and the chill colder, after the flare is burned 
out. 

There is no good cheer, no glow, no light, but, 
instead, a flickering, smoky flame, on the heart's 
altar of him who has chiefly regrets, grievances, 
hard feelings, failures and follies, with which to 
feed the fires of life's winter, Nor is there any 



WINTEB FIKES. 101 

sight so pathetic as that of the uneasy, fussy, 
despondent person, with scanty store of fuel in 
mind and heart for the winter fire, — scratching 
up a trifling excitement, or running after a 
shaving of distraction, laying them upon the 
smouldering, blackened coals Y^hich remain of 
life's burned-out fires, and then trying to fan 
them into a flame which must depend for its 
feeble light and glow upon success in finding 
enough sticks and shavings within the social 
range to keep it alive. The fagots which such 
people gather are the petty details of neigh- 
borhood gossip. The stories of Mary Wilkins 
depict this phase of New-England life, which is 
by no means uncommon. She pictures men and 
women living the narrowest conceivable lives, 
with no intellectual stimulus, no social incentive, 
no temptations, but a treadmill round of work, 
a childish petulance at trifles, a pathetic patience 
and an unhealthy, introspective religious ex- 
perience. The atmosphere of the stories Miss 
Wilkins writes is, for me, depressing, funereal. 
There is no glow, no warmth, on the hearth- 
stones of those small houses, nor in the hearts 
of the men and women that sit around them and 
knit and nod, 



102 WINTER FIRES. 

There are two facts relating to Winter of 
which few people have knowledge. 

One is, that Winter is actually shorter than 
Summer by seven days. In the astronomical 
division, the period from the 20th of March to 
the 22d of September is 186 days, while that 
from the 22d of September to the 20th of March 
is 179 days. 

The second is, that on December 21st the 
earth is actually nearer the sun by 3,000,000 
miles than it is on the 21st of June. We receive 
less heat from the sun in Winter, not because it 
is farther away, but because its rays fall with a 
long slant upon the earth; while in Summer 
they fall more directly upon us. 

Life's Summer is actually longer than its 
Winter. From birth until the prime of life is 
passed is at least fifty years of a healthy per- 
son's life ; while from the summit of life's prime 
to the end of this mortal career is thirty or, at 
most, forty years, with rare exceptions. And, 
unless some chronic disease makes life misera- 
ble, there ought to be many bright, comfortable 
and happy years during life's winter season. 
The warmth and cheer of life depend upon lat- 
itude rather than longitude ; upon breadth rather 



WINTER FIRES. 103 

than length. We may be farther from the source 
of blessedness in life's Summer than in its 
Winter. And though in youth and prime we 
experience more of the energy and glow of 
being, because its beams fall more directly upon 
us, yet in life's Winter, when its slanting rays 
yield us less comfort of body and vigor of mind, 
we may light our winter fires of resignation, 
cheerfulness, faith and hope ; and, if we have 
had the wit to store fuel to maintain them, our 
Winter may be not the least serene period of 
our lives. 

I love the Summer, the long bright days, the 
beauty and wonder of plant-life, the movements 
and songs of birds and insects. But, knowing 
that Winter comes, I gather and preserve a 
store of plants, and note many things relating 
to summer life, for winter study and arrange- 
ment ; and so keep in touch with the Summer, 
and preserve my longing for its return alive and 
active. I want to lay in treasures for my life's 
Winter, and fuel for its fires, so that I may keep 
a warm heart, a cheerful mind, and a sympathy 
in touch with the spirit of progress and the lives 
of my fellow-creatures. 

Some of the most companionable persons I 



i04 WINTER FIRES. 

have known were in life's winter solstice, but 
their winter fires burned brightly because they 
had memories stored full of sound wisdom, 
and hearts enriched with cheerfulness and 
affection, and spirits in touch with those around 
them, from whose lives they gathered many 
a favor and blessing to feed the flames which 
gave light and warmth in the short days of 
life's Winter. 

There are indeed many experiences which burn 
up much of the material we might wish to save 
for our winter fires. But there is always some- 
thing of value left from every such catastrophe. 
A severe sickness, for example, which is a burden 
of pain and weakness and danger and anxiety, 
may so burn out the vital powers of the body 
that they never recover their former vigor, and 
life-long invalidism is the result. But even such 
an illness brings to the one that experiences it 
somewhat which, when it is fanned into flame, 
warms and lights the heart in which it is 
cherished. Sickness and helplessness bring 
out all the latent kindliness and ministration 
of friends and neighbors. The wealth and 
warmth of their compassion are experienced, 
and they become more closely and kindly the 



WINTER FIRES. 105 

friends of the suffering one than they would 
have become under circumstances which could 
not touch the sympathies nor involve self- 
spending and caring for others. 

There is no one who would not agree that 
health is a great price to pay for even so rich a 
boon as hearts' pity and love ; a price never vol- 
untarily paid by any one. I only argue that the 
best gifts of our fellow-men are often bestowed 
upon us in our times of greatest need, and that 
this best, if adequately valued by its recipient, 
will be one of the brightest of the glowing 
memories upon the winter hearthstone. Dis- 
aster and misfortune and death, though they 
leave in ruins some of our most important inter- 
ests and dearest hopes, are not unrecompensed 
loss, since men and women are touched and 
softened by the feeling of one another's infirm- 
ities. The sympathetic generosity which impels 
us to share our resources with those that have 
lost all or nearly all of their ow r n, enlarges us, 
makes us wondrous kind, binds us together, 
heart to heart and interest to interest. 

Grief over the death of beloved friends is an 
experience which, in many natures, consumes 
much that is essential to winter fires : consumes 



106 WINTER FIRES. 

that serene, hopeful spirit, and that cheerful 
demeanor, which shed light and warmth upon 
all that gather around them. There is a spirit 
and trust which transmute grief into consolation 
and warm the desolate heart with the glow of 
gratitude and peace. That spirit and mood are 
revealed in the following words of an aged man, 
who writes : 

"When I think of the friends by whose kindness 
and love my life has been enriched and blest through 
all these years, I often feel that, if I have done no 
other good than to call out the kindness which I have 
experienced from them, I have not lived in vain. May 
we all lay up treasures of this kind, looking back upon 
the past, not with sorrowful regrets for what is gone, 
but with thankfulness for the richer gifts into which 
it has ever been transmuted by time, change and death, 
our friends losing their lives only to find them trans- 
formed and glorified, laying down their dying mem- 
bers in the dust, and rising from them spiritual and 
immortal beings. As such, may we cherish always 
the remembrance of them from each new experience 
when it passes away, carrying with us the better 
thought and life to which it has helped us. So with 
every friend who passes from this to a more perfect 
form of being. May we cherish in our heart of hearts 
a new and dearer companionship as we advance in 
years, compassed about more and more by a cloud of 
heavenly witnesses. So may we live in them and they 



WINTER FIRES. 107 

in us, our lives more and more hid with them in God. 
And, when this life of faith and hope is resolved into 
sight, and that which is in part is done away, then 
shall the shadows be removed from our eyes, and we 
shall know even as we are known." 

That mind must be cold and cheerless which 
opens only towards the past, and through which 
circulates only the atmosphere of the tomb. 
There is no way so sure of kindling a glow in 
the heart as putting it in sympathetic touch 
with other hearts. There are friends and asso- 
ciates who are glad to bring their sympathy and 
cheerfulness to add to the fuel of our winter 
fires, if we will not persist in smothering them 
with the ashes of our defeats and disappoint- 
ments, and quenching them with the snows of 
our complaints. Instead of huddling around 
cold hearths, appropriate your share of the light 
and warmth of the great human heart. Your 
share is indicated by your needs. If there is 
a spark of cheer and hope in the heart, instead 
of vainly trying to fan it into a feeble flame of 
piety and comfort for self alone, use it to kindle 
a flame in another heart colder and more cheer- 
less than your own. Your faintest spark of 
cheer and hope may kindle a grateful glow upon 
some smouldering hearth. 



/ 
/ 



108 WINTER FIRES. 

" If the world seems cold to you, 

Kindle fires to warm it ! 
Let their comfort hide from view 

Winters that deform it. 
Hearts as frozen as your own 

To that radiance gather; 
You will soon forget to moan, 

'Ah, the cheerless weather ! ' 

"If the world's a wilderness, 

Go build houses in it ! 
Will it help your loneliness 

On the winds to din it ? 
Raise a hut, however slight; 

Weeds and brambles smother; 
And to roof and meal invite 

Some forlorner brother. 

"If the world's a vale of tears, 

Smile till rainbows span it ! 
Breathe the love that life endears, 

Clear of clouds to fan it ! 
Of your gladness lend a gleam 

Unto souls that shiver; 
Show them how dark Sorrow's stream 

Blends with Hope's bright river." 

When gathering fuel for our winter fires 
we must not neglect to foster a deep trust in 
the whole make and outcome of life ; for that 



WINTER FIRES. 109 

burns steadily after much, that is material and 
temporal is consumed. The spirit that believes 
in the best; that looks on the bright side of 
life ; that bravely bears ills if they befall, and 
walks unfalteringly and carefully in the shadow 
if it lowers, in firm faith that in the Infinite 
Providence everything works together for good 
to them that love good; and that is confident 
that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the 
heart of man conceived, the things that God 
hath in keeping for them that love and trust 
him, — such a one is persuaded that neither 
death nor life, nor things present nor things to 
come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any 
other creature, can separate the children of God 
from his love. Such a one maintains a fire upon 
life's altar which all the waters of affliction can- 
not quench ; a fire which lights up every cloudy 
sky, and illumines every dark pathway. 

There is an old song that I love, which voices 
this calm, confident trust in God and in the 
whole make of things: 

" Oh, don't be sorrowful, darling, 
Oh, don't be sorrowful, pray; 
For, taking the year together, my dear, 
There isn't more night than day. 



110 WINTER FIRES. 

" 'Tis cloudy weather, my dear one, 
Time's waves they heavily run; 
But, taking the year together, my dear, 
There isn't more cloud than sun. 

u And God is God, my faithful, 
Of the night of death so grim ; 
And the gate that leads out of life, good wife, 
Is the gate that leads to Him." 




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The Complete Life* 

... By JAMES H. WEST. 

Cloth, beveled, neatly stamped, price 50 cents. 

Contents: 1. The Complete Life ; 2. The Helper-On ; 3. Moral 
Purpose; 4. The Deification of Man; 5. Equilibrium; 6. "The 
Holy Spirit." 

Chicago Evening Journal. — Every word the author in- 
dites is golden, and should be read by young and old. Such 
books are genuine uplifts of heart and mind, and when we 
get to heaven, if we ever do, through earth's sordid dust 
and mire, we shall have men like James H. West to thank 
for finding our way there. 

Boston Evening Traveller. — Remarkable for uplifting 
and vitalizing power. 

Christian Register. — Mr. West shows a sympathy with 
nature, a poetic and a spiritual sense of the divine forces 
that are working in nature and in man. The moral tone 
Is always earnest, and the moral ideal is high. 



Pamphlets, 16 to 32 pages each, some of them 
illustrated. 

Topics of To-day. 

Essays and Lectures on Important Themes of Evolu- 
tion and Society, by Prof. John Fiske, M. J. Savage, 
John W. Chadwick, Dr. Lewis G. Janes, E. D. Cope, 
Ph.D., and others. 

Ten Cents Each. 

1. HERBERT SPENCER: His life and personal character- 

istics. By Daniel Greenleaf Thompson. 

2. CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN : His ancestry, life, and 

personal characteristics. By John W. Chadwick. 

3. SOLAR AND PLANETARY EVOLUTION : How suns and 

worlds come into being. By Garrett P. Serviss. 

4. EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH: The story of geology; 

how the world grew. By Dr. Lewis G. Janes. 

5. EVOLUTION OF VEGETAL LIFE : How does life begin? 

By William Potts. 

6. EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL LIFE : The evidences. By 

Rossiter W. Raymond, Ph.D. 

7. THE DESCENT OF MAN: His ancestral line; duration 

of human life on the planet. By E. D. Cope, Ph.D. 

8. EVOLUTION OF MIND : The mind and the nervous system , 

the nature of mind. By Robert G. Eccles, M.D. 

9. EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY : Growth of the family, city, 

State ; domestic relations. By James A. Skilton, Esq. 

10. EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY : Origin of religious beliefs ; 

ancestor and nature worship. By Z. Sidney Sampson. 

11. EVOLUTION OF MORALS : How altruism grows out of 

egoism ; the proper balance. By Dr. Lewis G. Janes. 

12. PROOFS OF EVOLUTION : From geology, embryology, 

rudimentary organs, etc. By Nelson C. Parshall. 

13. EVOLUTION AS RELATED TO RELIGIOUS THOUGHT : 

Design ; miracle. By John W. Chadwick. 

14. THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION : Its relation to 

prevailing systems. By Starr Ho yt Nichols. 

15. THE EFFECTS OF EVOLUTION ON THE COMING CIV- 

ILIZATION : Social schemes tested. By M. J. Savage. 

16. THE SCOPE AND PRINCIPLES OF THE EVOLUTION 

PHILOSOPHY : Human needs. By Dr. Lewis G. Janes. 

17. THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF HERBERT 

SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY. By Sylvan Drey, 



18. THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE : Sense-perception ; 

the Unknowable. By Robert G. Eccles, M.D. 

19. A STUDY OF MATTER AND MOTION : With quotations 

from many authorities. By Hon. A. N. Adams. 

20. PRIMITIVE MAN: Earliest races; cave-men; mound- 

builders ; first tools. By Z. Sidney Sampson. 

21. GROWTH OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION: Polygamy; 

polyandry ; monogamy ; divorce. By C. Stantland Wake. 

22. EVOLUTION OF THE STATE : Growth of family, tribe, 

clan, city; the State's final form. By John A. Taylor. 

23. EVOLUTION OF LAW : How law begins ; statute and judge- 

made law; customs and law. By Prof. Rufus Sheldon. 

24. EVOLUTION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE: Supernatural 

ideas ; sanitary science. By Robert G. Eccles, M.D. 

25. EVOLUTION OF ARMS AND ARMOR : Nature's methods ; 

final universal peace. By John C. Kimball. 

26. EVOLUTION OF THE MECHANIC ARTS : Development 

of the hand; inventions; labor. By J. A. Skilton, Esq. 

27. EVOLUTION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM : Wages the out- 

growth of slavery. By Prof. George Gunton. 

28. EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN CIVILIZATION : Pagan, 

Catholic and Protestant ideas. By Caroline B. Le Row. 

29. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. I. The Theological 

Method. By John W. Chad wick. 

30. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. II. The Socialistic 

Method. By William Potts. 

31. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. III. The Anarch- 

istic Method. By Hugh O. Pentecost. 

32. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. IV. The Scientific 

Method. By Daniel Greenleaf Thompson. 

33. ASA GRAY : His life and work. By Mrs. Mary Treat. 

34. EDWARD LIVINGSTON YTOUMANS. The Man and his 

work. By Prof. John Fiske. 

"The mode of presentation seems to me admirably adapted 
for popularizing Evolution views." — Herbert Spencer. 

"Entirely admirable."— Boston Times. 

"Extremely entertaining and instructive."— BrooklynCitizen. 

"Excellent, succinct, interesting."— Public Opinion. 

"One rarely finds so much of value made so interesting." 
Buffalo Express. 

* # * All books and pamphlets mentioned in these pages for 
sale by booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of price by 

JAMES H. WEST, Publisher, 

174 High Street, Boston. 



Two Books of Large Value. 



Sociology. 



The Growth, Welfare, and Social Relations of Man. 

By Prof. John Fiske, Prof. George Gunton, Prof. 
Kufus Sheldon, Dr. Kobert G. Eccles, Dr. Lewis G. 
Janes, and others. Cloth, 412 pages, $2.00. 

The Scope and Principles of the Evolution Philosophy ; The 
Relativity of Knowledge; Primitive Man; Growth of the 
Marriage Relation ; Evolution of the State ; Evolution of Law ; 
Evolution of Medical Science ; Evolution of Arms and Armor ; 
Evolution of the Mechanic Arts ; Evolution of the Wages Sys- 
tem; Education as a Factor in Civilization; The Theological 
Method in Social Reform; The Socialistic Method in Social 
Reform ; The Anarchistic Method in Social Reform ; The Sci- 
entific Method in Social Reform; Life of Asa Gray; Life of 
E. L. Youmans. 

" A very brilliant book indeed. One can here get at the core 
of all the dominant isms." — Minneapolis Journal. 

" A great educational work. There is a whole world of in- 
formation in these papers."— Brooklyn Standard- Union. 



Evolution. 



The Origin of Worlds and the Ascent of Life. 

By Prof. E. D. Cope, Ph.D., Dr. Lewis G. Janes, 
Dr. Kobert G. Eccles, John W. Chadwick, M. J. 
Savage, and others. Cloth, 408 pages, $2.00. 

Life of Herbert Spencer; Life of Darwin; How Suns and 
Planets Grew; Evolution of the Earth; Vegetal Evolution; 
Evolution of Animal Life ; The Descent of Man ; Evolution of 
Mind; Evolution of Society; Evolution of Theology; Evolu- 
tion of Morals ; Proofs of Evolution ; Evolution as related to 
Religious Thought ; The Philosophy of Evolution ; The Effects 
of Evolution on the Coming Civilization. 

" Scholarly and instructive. We commend the book."— New 
York Sun. 

"A simple but accurate exposition of the evolutionary phi- 
losophy."— Science {New York). 

*#* For sale by booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price. 



[Second Thousand.] 

Uplifts of Heart and Will. 

In Prose and Verse. 

By JAMES H. WEST, 

Author of "The Complete Life," "In Love with Love," etc. 

"It takes a soul to move a body. 
* * Life develops from within" 

PRESS NOTICES : 

London Inquirer.— Helpful and interesting. The fact that a 
second thousand has been called for will be some guarantee of 
such a book's claim to notice. 

Sacramento Record -Union. — One of the most earnest vol- 
umes we have ever seen ; marked by an originality that renders 
it peculiarly attractive. 

Fall River Monitor. — They touch upon the many experiences 
of the ordinary daily life ; they have a wide comprehension of 
man's needs, and a still wider, deeper sympathy with his 
aspirations, his spiritual gains and losses. 

London Christian Life.— A book good for both old and young 
and for all alike. 

Yale Literary Magazine.— The poems included in the book 
are impressive, many of them being of a high order. 

Woman's Tribune. — Not dogmatic, deeply reverent, appeal- 
ing to the divine within the human soul, calling it to the 
heights of larger helpfulness and blessedness. 

Cleveland World— A. beautiful little volume, free from cant, 
and full of love, truth, and broad hunianitarianism. 

American Hebrew. — Prose and verse that will surely appeal 
to an ever-widening circle of readers. It is gratifying to know 
that a new edition has been demanded. 

London Christian World.— Full of very helpful and finely 
uttered things. The poems have in them a thrill of intense 
reality. 

Boston Herald.— One is very strongly impressed with the 
sincerity and reality of expression. 

The Unitarian. — The earnestness, indeed the eagerness, of 
the writer cannot fail to quicken a helpful and elevating 
aspiration in the heart of every reader. 

Cloth, bevelled, red edges, 106 pages, 50 cents. 

* # * For sale by booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt of price. 



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